re than has come of it in the past but evil to the South,
arrested development and a backward civilization. For the whites cannot
advance in law and order, in private and public morals, in wealth and in
industrial intelligence and efficiency with the speed commensurate with
their social and sectional opportunity if they persist in wasting so much
of their individual and collective energies in keeping the Negro down at
the bottom of their social and political fabric without regard to his
merits and abilities.

Low water mark has been reached in the ebb tide of Negro citizenship in
the South. Once upon a time, the race was represented in Congress, but
today the tribe of the Negro Congressmen is extinct and has long been
extinct. A few years ago it had its representatives on the Republican
National Committee, but today the tribe of the Negro National Committeemen
is extinct. The year 1912 may be memorable among other things for
witnessing the last appearance as a power in Republican National
Conventions of the Southern Negro delegate. The place which once knew him
in those quadrennial gatherings of the Warwicks of the party will soon
know him there no more forever. For,

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

Although the situation is depressing, it is far from hopeless, I think,
since the rise of the new Progressive party. For that party will be able
to do in the South what the Republican Party has proved itself incapable
of doing, namely, of attracting to itself Southern white men in sufficient
numbers to make of it a formidable party of opposition in Southern
affairs. It will not encounter the ancient distrust, the inveterate hatred
and contempt which the Republican Party arouses in those states, and which
have paralyzed its usefulness and reduced it as a party of opposition to
the zero point in Southern politics.

It is a notorious fact that the Southern whites as a class will not
affiliate with any political organization on terms of equality with the
blacks--that is, they may be educated to accept the Negro as a voter but
nothing can induce them to accept him as a leader. White and black party
following with white leadership is therefore the only feasible
proposition, which stands any show of success as a party of opposition in
that section under existing conditions. Such a proposition, the Republican
Party is i